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Rating: 3.7/5. From 1322 votes.

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Shrink Ray Card Review

This card looks like a worse Equality. But it doesn’t mean that it’s bad – Equality is one of the most busted cards in the game and for a long time the main reason why Control Paladin was viable. It didn’t get many removal tools since then, and now this is one. And it’s pretty solid.

It seems to serve two main purposes. First, you can use it as a backup Equality to just clear the board. Combo it with Wild Pyromancer for 7 mana or Consecration for 9 mana. Of course, you don’t get much leftover mana like you do with Equality combos, but it’s still fine. You very often lose games with Control Paladin, because you didn’t draw your Equality – redundancy is good. Second use would be just as a single answer to big boards. It doesn’t work well against Aggro (at least not always, if they end up with a bunch of Midrange minions on the board then yeah, but most of the time you will spend 5 mana and they will still hit you for 5-6 and you will still have to clear the 1/1’s after), nor it does work well against Combo (most of the time, Combo decks don’t care about you answer their minions, unless you Transform them, that’s another story). It works best against Midrange and Control builds, especially those packed with big threats. This card is amazing against Big Druid, or Even Warlock, or Recruit Hunter – the decks that wants to crush you with their big minions. In case of those decks, lots of time you can just drop this and that’s all, their board was answered. For example, changing the Warlock’s board of 8/8, 4/9 and 4/4 to 3x 1/1 is a huge difference. The first one kills you in 2-3 turns, the second one you don’t really have to worry about.

All in all, it would be a solid Paladin card. Not amazing, but good enough to run, as the build desperately needs more removal cards. However, the problem is that Control Paladin still looks poorly. Despite this being a solid card, it might not see any play at all, because Control Paladin is not great. And so far, this expansion doesn’t seem to do much to bring him back. There are still a few cards incoming, but they would need to be absolutely nuts to see play. Merely “good” is probably not enough to bring the deck back.

59 Comments

Been mucking about with a couple of Exodia Paladin builds with Shrink Ray as a one-of; one interaction I hadn’t considered, but actually encountered, was playing against another control-style Paladin when they had Immortal Prelate… Shrink Ray counts as an enchantment played on their Prelate. Which is nice.

How did this cart get 4 stars? This is trash tier. Equality costs 2 mana, and you can play consecration with 6 mana, to clear the board and hit the opponent in the face with all you have. With this you need 9 mana for consecration and your minions loose attack so you don’t deal any damage. This is 0 star card.

I think people sleep on the fact that this is by and far the best odd paladin answer to the by and far best anti aggro card in the game (spreading plague).

This card is a massive deal breaker in the druid matchup if it ever gets too dire for aggrodin. Exspecially when paired with all the divine shield generation in pally.

Also lets not forget that while this is just waaaaaay worse tarim effect without the 3/7 body, tarim is unironically so good that you run freaking stonehill in all paladin variants just to get more tarims so way worse tarim might just be good enough

Even if you have this card in your hand against plague you are pushing no dmg that turn and lose health on your minions or even some minions itself to push kill of the 1/1s. Doesn’t sounds like winning.

Odd Paladin looses it’s board all the time, trading and getting sweeped, but it rebuilds so fast that it often doesn’t matter. Against plague though, without buffs you’d need five times as many Silver Hands as there are scarabs. Shrink Ray even’s the odds here 🙂

To be honest, to me the only real utility of this card is for Control Paladin to be able to run a third Equality. There’s a few situations where this is better than Equality (the enemy has a threatening board of minions and you don’t have Wild Pyro or Consecration), but generally Equality does what this does, and for only 2 mana. Also, making your minions shrink too makes this clunky. With Equality + Consecration you could still output considerable damage from your board, this will reduce that damage. It’s definitely over-costed. Now, since Equality is such a powerful card, I do see Control Pally running one copy of this so they can have an extra Equality for the late game. Rating it 2.5/5 stars, because a third Equality is THAT good.

I don’t think Odd Paladin would want to lower their own damage output and make big plays like Stormwind Champion more vulnerable just to get through a troublesome taunt minion or two.
Additionally, Control Paladins would rather clear the board with the two card combos made possible with Equality than just weaken it.

In the case for control, this would just be a third copy of Equality. With Shrink Ray, you can delay the game a turn or two before throwing out actual removal of some sort, but the attack reduction is not worth that much on top of the health reductions.

In Odd Paladin, you’re Silver Hand Recruits ARE your removal spells with Raid Leader and Level Up! being your Spell Damage increases, and playing this instead of Ironbeak Owl, which some of the most popular versions of the deck don’t even play so they don’t need the silence to begin with, would be getting functionally the same effect except for two extra mana and you’d need to sacrifice at least one minion to take out a troublesome Taunt.

Given the aggressive nature of Odd Paladin, the deck would not want to play a five mana Equality if it had the option to. Maybe it would at three mana because it would be a useful response to a Spreading Plaque, but in such a case, Void Ripper would be better since almost every minion in Odd Paladin has equal health to attack and it comes with a 3/3 body.

The deck already plays functional board wipes in the form of Raid Leader, Level Up, and Stromwind Champion given the amount of damage those cards add to a board full of Silver Hands. Plus, aggressive decks have historically not wanted to effects like this because it would lower their own damage output and make their own board more vulnerable. Murloc Paladin and Silver Hand Paladin have never played Equality, and I don’t think Odd Paladin would either if they could

This is sure to be an impactful card and will definitely be played in control paladin and even midrange paladin. There’s just not many single cards out there that can deal with a board full of enemy minions so when they do get printed they almost always see play. The ceiling is high on this card. I can even see it in something like baku paladin where most of your guys are already 1-1’s and this shrinks the enemies down and lets you trade how you want. Especially once you have nine or ten mana you can play this and then buff your guys. 5 out of 5 stars for sure.

In the class that already has Equality and two of the cheapest board clearing combos in the game as a result, this is largely not needed for a Control Paladin. It still be played in a Control Paladin as a third copy of Equality, but I’m not exactly confident.

I’m not convinced Odd Paladin would even want to play board clearing effect since dropping a Raid Leader, Level Up, or Stormwind Champion on board of Silver Hand Recruits would often have a similar effect or just outright win the game if they create enough damage.

Reducing your opponent’s board to a heap of 1/1s is super powerful. Granted it also decreases your board, but Paladin can easily buff them back up. This card removes almost all pressure from the board stalling the game enough to find win conditions in control paladin. Really like this card 5/5.

Equality by itself, or while you have no minions in play does nothing for you. Let’s say you equality on a board of 2 mountain giants, while you have nothing in play. They are still 8/1, you still get hit for 16 next turn. With Shrink Ray those 8/8 turn into 1/1’s giving you a lot more breathing room. I’m not saying equality is bad, it’s amazing. However, equality by itself does absolutely nothing. I’m just saying it is great to have more options for a control pally type deck.

An Even Warlock could swing with those two Mountain Giants before you could even play this, and if Equality set the attack of all minions to 1 instead of the heath it would see no play. I’m doubting the extra utility of this card is worth the three mana on top of the two cost of setting all minions heath to one, especially with the Pyromancer-Equality combo being one of the most ubiquitous aspects of Control styled Paladin decks and have been since the begining.

This card is super meta dependent.
I can’t help thinking of Eadric this Pure or whatever his name was, where for two more mana you got a 3/7 and it didn’t effect your own board.
Bold prediction:
I don’t think this card will ever see real play
2/5

This is EXACTLY the kind of thing Control Paladin is looking for, it stalls out the game for Equality/Consecration and Paladins have historically been desperate for ways to deal with large boards; a 2-card combo really hurts its consistency. Still not convinced it’ll work this expansion, but this is a step in the right direction for sure.

Also seems way too slow and clunky for Odd Paladin, you’ll want to be spending that 5 mana on setting up your own board.

This is too clunky to be used in Odd Paladin. Void Ripper is better in most situations where this might be alright. This is an interesting Control Paladin card, though I’m not sure if it’s cheap enough to see play.

This is a really good tech option for odd paladin since it just wrecks every taunt ever. Void ripper is much more situational and against smth like the loch king it does nothing. In control paladin, this card is just what it needed to be playable. Paladin lacks aoe removals in general, but this is like a better portal for 5 mana, because it drastically reduced the output damage from the opponent.

This is more situational then Void Ripper. It is ONLY useful if you just have 1/1s and your opponent has a big taunt board. Void Ripper is useful to flip plagues, flip Corridor Creepers for extra damage, buff your minion’s health with Raid Leader, bust through taunts, etc, AND it leaves a 3/3 body behind.

This helps you clear the board, but it has no use outside of that, and it doesn’t leave a body behind. For a proactive deck like Odd Paladin, I just don’t think it’s good.

I see this as a tool to place in Odd Paladin. While an aggro deck wouldn’t normally want something this clunky, it is great for some of their worst match ups. This allows a board silverhand recruits to take out an whole Hadronox board. It’s not necessarily going to be used that way, but it was the first thing that came to my mind.

Oh no.
No aggro paladin.
How sad.
Actually this seems very bad for control as they have few minions and enemy ( aggro ) has a lot, so using this just seems pretty pointless unless it’s odd control paladin, which I just don’t see being good